Bifold, french or patio doors

[ejm64]

Hi
We are trying to decide if to put in bifold, french or sliding patio doors. We have been told that sliding patio doors are coming back in, with people replacing french doors for them. What does everyone think? We can only envisage our parents old sliding doors and as it’s a bungalow we have bought we are trying to make it look more modern. The other option is bifold for one opening and french for the other (the other opening is too small for bifolds), but bifolds are much more expensive! Aghh!

I was looking at sliding doors instead of bifold ones, but my gap is only 2.4m and sliding doors would only give me about a meter width when open apparently accounting for frames etc. I should get an extra 70-80 cm opening with bifold. I have also looked at swing and slide doors which look good but were about £4000 as opposed to £3000 for the bifolds (with blinds)

I'm having sliding doors, 3 panes so I can have 2/3rds open at either end or fixed in the middle. I didn't want the "stack" either sticking out on the patio or in the room.

We went for sliding doors on a 2.3m opening. One door is fixed, the other slides. Toyed between sliding and bifolds but essentially decided that as the room is north-facing, we were unlikely to want to fully open it up often. Sliding gives 2 bigger apertures, bifolds would have been 3 doors with more frame visible etc. I also think the sliding door is very easy to use on a day-to-day basis. We went for Warmcore which was very good value and so far so good, installed by a local fitter.

Sliders. We had three large panes and are brilliant. Also the glass is thicker than bifolds as the bifold mechanisms cannot take the weight. Oh and the bi fold mechanisms tend to fail much earlier due to wear and tear. As previous poster, we didn't like the stack either but they do work if you have a small space

Wineymummy what did you pay for that door?

I have bifolds and wish we'd had sliding doors. As pp say it is a rare day that you have them completely open so a bit of a waste really.

Ours open outside to the far corner of the house so are not obtrusive for our garden but still take up quite a bit of room on the patio.

And again less frame visible when closed with sliding.

I would change mine if I had my way but my DH would have a nervous breakdown because they were so expensive.

We paid £2800 + VAT

Actually just looking at the quote is was a 2.8m opening, and 2.2m tall.

Thanks winey

We had bifolds in our previous house and sliders in the current one. Both cover entire walls so long runs of glass. We never had a problem with the bifolds - and in fact I found it easier to open just one than it is to open a slider, but that may be due to the lock position on our doors. I quite liked having the door stack at the ends of the run - it stopped wind getting in, but I guess it depends on the house shape - our bifolds were on a room the jutted out of the house.

Sliders have longer runs of glass without frames, but the main drawback is that sliders need a track for each pane, so the threshold is much wider.

Sliders are definitely in vogue at the moment.

Winemummy would you mind sending me a pic of yours...I just need to see what so new sliding doors look like compared to what my parents had however many years ago!